The destructiveness of wildfire to lives, property and the environment is often grave. Unlike some disasters which occur in an instant (e.g. earthquakes), leaving human resources best deployed merely to deal with the aftermath, wildfires, while occurring fairly rapidly, incur their devastation typically over a period of many days or weeks (sometimes months). Furthermore, while many natural disasters are of a type which can only largely be prepared for in advance (e.g. hurricanes, tornados, tsunamis and other extreme weather) and dealt with in the aftermath, wildfires can to a great extent be combatted to limit their destructiveness. Thus, significant opportunities exist to deploy firefighting resources in a rapid and effective manner to achieve goals of protection of life, property and the environment, as well as to extinguish the wildfire or at least limit the wildfire to relatively safe combustion of low value or low environmental sensitivity regions.
Existing firefighting resources include both ground and aerial firefighting resources. Ground resources can include bulldozers, firefighting teams with manual and powered hand tools, water tenders (distributing water or other firefighting agents) and a variety of human resource support personnel and vehicular assets to provide support for these ground resources.
Aerial firefighting resources include fixed wing and rotary wing aircraft. Fixed wing aircraft typically carry a firefighting agent loaded at a reloading base of operations, but also can carry water loaded at a main base area or scooped up from a lake or other body of water (with agents added to the water in some instances, such as with systems such as those described in U.S. Published Patent Application No. 2015/0231428 and U.S. Pat. No. 9,022,133, incorporated herein by reference in their entirety). The fixed wing resources fly over an area to be treated with water or firefighting agent and drop their payload of water or firefighting agent, either directly upon the active front of the fire or in a strategic manner along a “fire line” or other path to be established as a barrier against fire propagation therethrough. The water and/or firefighting agents can also be utilized for other tactical purposes such as to defend trapped victims, valuable structures or sensitive environmental areas from the advancing wildfire. Rotary wing aircraft typically include helicopters with a bucket suspended therebelow which can be dipped into a body of water, carried to an area where the firefighting strategy would benefit from its placement, and dumped upon the target area. It is known in at least one instance to enhance the effectiveness of such water drops by adding activated polymer gel to the water before dropping from the rotary wing aircraft, such as in the manner disclosed in U.S. Published Patent Application No. 2011/0203812, incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
To coordinate these ground resources and aerial firefighting resources highly skilled individuals are organized within a command structure, to achieve the best possible outcome in fighting the wildfire. In many instances this organization structure includes an incident command system which includes an air tactical group supervisor (ATGS) under the supervision of an incident commander. Often the ATGS and/or related personnel are stationed in an aircraft (typically fixed wing) “orbiting” the wildfire theatre to both monitor the situation and direct the dispatch of firefighting resources. While this is a good vantage point, such personnel can be hampered in viewing the wildfire theatre in that smoke and/or clouds/haze can obscure sight, darkness diminishes visualization of the area, and some attributes of the area, such as combustible fuel density can be difficult to determine. Also, even with binoculars the ability to “zoom in” on particular sub-locations is limited.
Within the incident command system (ICS), the air tactical group supervisor (ATGS) is the one responsible for determining how and where drops are made from both fixed wing (FW) and rotary wing (RW) aircraft. These instructions may be general (for ongoing assignments) or specific (for a set number of drops). In larger incidents, subordinate ICS positions may also be filled dealing solely, for example, with the use of RW craft. ATGS generally operate at about 3,000′ above ground level and on very large fires more than one may be used, each responsible for a different geographic area. ATGS are subordinate to incident commanders (ICs).
ICs are on scene, ground based and responsible for all assigned resources and operations among other functions. The largest portion of their work early in initial attack (IA) fires centers on accessing the situation, developing the initial strategy and tactics, and deploying ground resources (engines, water tenders, dozers and hand crews). The incident action plans (IAPs) are initially mental and developed frequently following typical patterns but in certain critical instances do not.
Firefighters are trained and expect to base decisions on less than complete information. The present fire status, expected future fire behavior and growth, potential unrecognized hazards, and threats to the environment, improvements and humans are only some of the areas that comprise the universe of information that is incompletely known and may be rapidly changing. Firefighters form what are essentially opinions but informed and useful ones to base their actions on. And they must also weigh their decisions in light of agency policies and direction, and societal and overall human values.
This system is intended to increase the amount, accuracy and selective dissemination of the information at hand. This applies to both in IA situations and when fire escapes require that the ICS organization be expanded to manage larger incidents requiring the sharing of increased amounts of information with an increasing number of people.
Beginning at the time of the first report, time constraints exist and a highly dynamic, chaotic event is occurring that requires a flexible and often evolving set of tactics to manage. The information must be timely, relevant, succinct and easily accessible in order to aid the decision making process.
In the early stages of IA fires, ATGSs develop their plans for the use aerial resources (and sometimes ground resources) to fit what they can visually observe and any information they receive from the ground. The size, movement and characteristics of the present fire, the deployment and actions of ground resources, the terrain and vegetation changes the fire may advance into, the expected arrival of additional resources are what chiefly can be quickly observed or known. The effect of any actions undertaken to that point in time is critical feedback affecting their next decisions as is any information on the IC's intentions.
This is a constant, ongoing process due to the chaotic, dynamic and variable nature of fire, and the effects of the changing environment on it. Weather in the form of wind is the most often unpredictable component and one that is not subject to small scale, accurate anticipation over time. There is no such thing as a weather forecast that provides sufficiently up to date, detailed information at this point due to the inability to measure initial conditions, only general trends can be known. Accordingly, a need exists for a system which more effectively provides situational awareness to firefighting command personnel and to improve the ability of command to manage and dispatch firefighting resources.